This review mentions rape and sexual assault.
At the 2008 US Music Awards, Demi Lovato – then Disney’s leading lady for her star – joined Kamp Rock—Smiled when a reporter from the red carpet asked about the inspiration behind her pop-punk solo music. “Believe it or not, since I was 16, I’ve been through a lot,” she replies with a dignified giggle. “Come on, how sad can you be at 16?” insisted the man. “Oh, a lot,” Lovato replied at once.
While dutifully playing the role of a chaste pop star – though one fascinated by metal music – she struggled with Lovato under the tremendous pressure of the media and music industry (child stars, who we so often forget are workers). Behind the scenes, Lovato struggled with an eating disorder, self-harm and drug use. She recently revealed that she was raped at the age of 15; although she reported the assault to adults, the perpetrator continued to work alongside her. After entering a treatment facility for the first time at 18, Lovato was transparent about her struggle with addiction and recovery.
In the summer of 2018, after six years of austerity, Lovato relapsed. On July 24, she overdosed on opioids, causing three strokes, a heart attack, multiple organ failure, pneumonia, permanent brain damage and permanent facial problems. As she explains in the recent documentary Dance with the devil, the drug dealer who supplied Lovato that night sexually assaulted her and left her for dead. It is a miracle that she survived it.
Arrived next to the documentary and a flash of confession interviews, Lovato’s seventh album, Dance with the devil … The art of starting over take control of the narrative. Over the 28 songs, the 28-year-old leans into her personal battle; the pop star who once had a desire to “be free from all demons”, apparently accepted the reality that she should live next to them. On the power ballad “Anybody”, Lovato tries to find comfort in her art, but falls short. “A hundred million stories / And a hundred million songs / I feel stupid when I sing / Nobody listens to me,” she says. Written before her relapse, it is a cry for help from a place of loneliness and desperation. The sly ‘Dance with the Devil’ gives a sketch of the slope that led to overdose: ‘A red wine’ became ‘a little white stripe’, and then a little glass pipe ‘. “ICU (Madison’s Lullabye)” relives the moment Lovato wakes up in the hospital, legally blind and unable to recognize her sister.
After this gloomy three-song prologue, Dance with the devil expands to reveal the person who Lovato is – or wants to be today; there is much shed skin, rewritten ends and references to heaven reached. While Lovato’s previous record, 2017 Tell me you love me, immersed in R&B at the pool party and electropop, she explores a variety of influences from ‘The Art of Starting Over’s soft rock to a haunting cover of Gary Jules’ haunting cover of Tears for Fears’s ‘Mad World’. “Lonely People” strives for a stadium, single with a refrain called Romeo and Juliet, which suppresses the positive vibes with the greatest thoughts – “The truth is that we all die alone / so you must love yourself before you leave. “
For nearly an hour, the album attempts to cover a large amount of ground, eliciting years of trauma and reconfiguring Lovato’s public identity. She presents a state union about her recovery – she’s “California Sober” – and her sexuality. On ‘The Kind of Lover I Am’, a kind of sequel to her bi-curious folk song ‘Cool for the Summer’ of 2015, Lovato fully embraces her silence and her overflowing heart. “I do not care if you have a dick / I do not care if you have a WAP / I just want to love / you know what I say,” she says at the autro. “Like I want to share my life with someone at some point.”
Lovato is certainly not the first pop star to speak out about the continued existence of the music industry in sexual and emotional abuse; like Kesha, her intricate revelations refuse to be pushed under the rug for fear of bad publicity or to isolate a fanbase. But even if Lovato strikes an optimistic or optimistic tone, it’s hard to look beyond the tragedy that is at the heart of the album. The synthetic ‘Melon Cake’ got its name from the birthday dessert that Lovato’s team served her in the years leading up to her overdose: a cylinder of ripe watermelon, rubbed in fat-free whipped cream, covered with straw and candles. Although Lovato confidently declares that melon cakes are a thing of the past, the image is so depressing that it’s hard to concentrate on anything else, especially on the intention of being a fun song. But is that not what so many of us do to survive? We try to reformulate our traumas as we have learned; we use humor as a defense mechanism; we go on because we promote the destructive spiral in feelings of guilt or shame.
One of those rare moments when Dance with the devil goes beyond a 1: 1 recreation of Lovato’s life is ‘Met Him Last Night’, a sly duet with Ariana Grande. Both artists experienced horrific tragedies and responded with elegance and empathy, writing songs about their experiences for themselves and for anyone who might see their own trauma. But ‘With him last night’ does not strive for catharsis, at least not explicitly. Instead, the two vibrate blissfully over lost innocence and deception in the shadow of ‘him’, apparently Satan. This is the closest thing to escaping on an album that is completely focused on harsh reality.
Across the spectrum, the music video for “Dancing With the Devil,” which recreates the night of Lovato’s overdose and the ensuing battle for her life in the ICU, is in astonishing detail. There’s the machine that cleaned her blood through a vein in her neck, the suitcase bag presumably full of drugs, and the sponge bath that gently traces the “survivor” tattoo on her neck. Although Lovato co-directed the video, saying that sharing her experiences is part of her healing process, the visuals feel almost unnecessarily voyeuristic: an artist recreating their worst moment on the assumption that it speaks for itself.
Dance with the devil asks you to trust that it’s enough by Demi Lovato. The music will undoubtedly reach listeners struggling with their own burdens and look to Lovato as a role model, just as they have been on the red carpet since their teens, forced to justify the depth of her lived experience. This start-up-of-the-makeup moment brings us closer to her than ever before: the four-part documentary rollout, the multiple album releases, the press tour without any hindrance. But the diaristic nature of the music and the blunt power with which it is delivered show the person Demi Lovato and sideline the artist Demi Lovato. It’s an unenviable position: to have a story so sad that the emotional catharsis we feel in real life overshadows what she wanted to create on the album.
Buy: rough trade
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